Awarding Experience
Awarding Experience Points Determining the fair distribution of Experience points to Player Characters is one of the most important aspects of your job as Arbiter. You must keep track of two types of Experience Points for each Player Character, Combat Pool Points, and Generic Pool Points. 'Generic Pool Points' Generic Experience is bonus Pool Points awarded to PCs for actions not otherwise recognized. They are not ''awarded for the use of skills or Spells or making Saving Throws. They ''are''awarded for good role playing; playing in Character with respect to disposition and Character Traits, coming up with good ideas, say that save another PC's life, or that of an important NPC, and for helping to advance the story line, especially if a role playing session has bogged down and become unproductive. Generic Pool Points should also be awarded for accomplishing important story goals, such as completing a difficult mission or surviving a potentially fatal test. Initially, Pool Points should be handed out sparingly. Remember, each one equals a new Spell or Skill for the PCs. As the Characters progress, however, they will require more points to advance Skills and Spells, so it may make sense to slowly increase the amount of experience you award over the duration of a campaign. Keep in mind it is usually easier to increase the amount of experience you award than to decrease it once the Players have grown to expect generous totals. The rate at which you award Experience is a matter of personal preference. Depending on your nature and the desires of your role-playing group, you may want your Characters to advance quickly, or you might prefer a less super-powered role-playing environment. It is important to balance the rate of advancement carefully; too little experience can leave the Players frustrated, too much and there is no excitement at seeing one\'s Character improve. If you find the Characters advancing too quickly, reduce your experience awards, if they get frustrated or lose interest in playing, perhaps you should be awarding more. The best guide for an Arbiter in awarding Experience is experience itself. 'Combat Experience' Awarding Combat Experience can be a tricky task for any Arbiter, especially if the gaming system is new to you, or you are new to running a Role-Playing Campaign. The following guidelines will help you to develop a feel for awarding Combat Pool Points in a reasonable manner. Don\'t forget that Military Specialists, Exo-Specialists and Military Veterans receive additional Combat Pool Points, these should be factored in after applying the Combat Experience Allotment Modifiers. There are several ways to determine appropriate amounts of experience to award for combat scenarios. If you have created the enemy Characters from scratch, following the regular Character Creation Rules, then the best way to determine the suitable number of Experience Points is to add up the total number of Pool Points expended in making the foes and dividing that number by five. The resulting number of Pool Points would be divided by the number of surviving PCs in the group and awarded as Combat Pool Points. 'Example: '''a party of six adventurers encounters and defeats three Granite Titans. If the Arbiter created the giants using 50 Pool Points on each one, then the total Creation Pool Points were 150. Dividing this total by 5 results in the Base Combat Pool Points, in this case 30. The 30 Combat Pool Points are distributed to the PCs, 5 per Character. The above method works well as a rough estimation of Experience deserved, but what if the Party consisted of unarmed Goblins and the Giants all had Runicly Infused poleaxes and were riding massive Dinosaurs? Five measly Combat Pool Points for overcoming such great odds seems a little unfair. A method of modifying the Totals is required for such power disparities. For these kinds of instances, refer to the Combat Experience Allotment Modifiers Table. Experienced Arbiters may prefer to 'Arbitrarily' assign Attributes and combat statistics to Non-Player Characters and Monsters, without working out exact Pool Point expenditures. When creating Arbitrary Foes it is very important to carefully balance the power of the Foes to the power of the PCs. Try to avoid inadvertently annihilating the entire party, as this should only ever be done intentionally'. ' To quickly determine Base Combat Pool Point values for Arbitrary Foes, determine the average Modifiers to Strike and Defend for each individual Foe. Divide the total by 2 and add together the values for all Foes. After applying the appropriate Combat Experience Allotment Modifiers, (see below), distribute the resulting number of Combat Pool Points amongst the surviving Player Characters. Note that this method tends to be less than completely accurate, so make adjustments at your discretion. 'Combat Experience Allotment Modifiers' Combat Pool Point Award Modifiers are added to, and subtracted from, the total of the Base Combat Pool Points of all the foes involved in a single combat encounter. Then the result is divided evenly between all surviving PCs, (and any NPCs that actively fought on the side of the PCs). '''Note '''that it is not necessary to win the fight in order to be awarded Combat Pool Points, only to survive. On the other hand, it is possible to win a fight but gain no experience! No matter how uneven the fight, you can never lose experience points from a negative total of modified Combat Pool Points. The guidelines in the above tables will never cover every situation. If they cover even half of the situations you find your Characters in, consider yourself lucky. It is important that as the Arbiter you can compare a given situation to the suggested guidelines and extrapolate a result. Keep in mind that you are the ultimate power in the domain of the Role-Playing world, and what ever you decide goes. Category:Arbiter